Description

Litmus Press, paperback

Publication Date: March 12, 2025

Publisher Marketing: CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books combines three of ammiel alcalay’s previously published poetic textsScrapmetal (2007), the cairo notebooks (1993), and from the warring factions (2002)with a new work, “Controlled Demolition.” Unlike most writing categorized as “documentary” poetry, here the author and his process are constant reference points, serving as a prism to refract changes over time and circumstance in what becomes a mix of memoir, poetry, auto-critique, prose narrative, history, and investigative journalism by other means.”The notion of follow the person is a constant in Alcalay’s poetics. The implication is this: the energy one artist can invest in really knowing the mind, commitments, affections, and beliefs of a progenitor or a kindred who is simply out of reachtoo far away or too long-deadis a conjuring agent, a potential that, once mobilized in earnest, will in some way become actual. This auto-excavation of embodied cultural and literary lineages is a through-line in Alcalay’s oeuvre, and it grounds the four books gathered in this collection, which were borne out of real-life interactions with peoples and places. The son of Sephardic Jews who immigrated from the former Yugoslavia to the US as refugees after WWII, Alcalay was influenced by his upbringing in Boston in the ’60s and ’70s, which immersed him in countercultural movements protesting the Vietnam War and de-facto racial segregation. He began writing in the mid-’70s while living between Boston, Gloucester, Cape Cod, and New York City. Attending City College in Harlem, he worked in construction, auto-repair, trucking, house painting, and various other occupations, which placed him alongside a diverse array of mentors who imparted wisdom on subjects ranging from ancient languages to brick masonry to house demolition. By grounding poetry’s materials and meanings in everyday life, Alcalay re-evaluates knowledge as such, what it is and what it can be, and sets the record straight on who can access and contribute to it.” from the Introduction